All posts tagged: data

Great leaders read. It’s a short sentence but it is layered with meaning. What is it about reading that makes it such a universal passion among people who are best suited to lead people and organizations? Is it that leaders read books that contain all the answers? Not likely. The realities of today’s rapidly changing market place have no historical precedent. 21st century business leaders must handle challenges that have never been seen before.

Human beings collect data points from the day they are born. As they grow and experience more things, they put those data points into a context. Every human considers those data points and the corresponding context to guide their next steps. This is of tremendous value when you’re considering decisions like banging your head against the wall. (Example: “Do I have enough data points to know that I will get a headache? I do! Let’s NOT do that,” thinks my learned 5-year old. “HUH?” says my curious 4-year old, followed by a very surprised, “Ow!” He needs more data points.)

Your Core Company Value Propositions and ESSA

The Every Student Succeeds Act has silently crept up to revolutionize the educational market.

The law, which is being touted as a symbol of successful bipartisanship, has also created significant challenges for businesses. But this is not what’s surprising. What’s truly astonishing and, at times, worrying is that both the schools and businesses don’t realize its true impact. If they do understand, they don’t know what to do about it. This is where we step in. The name of the game is to adapt to survive. And here are the 4 steps to help your business achieve that. Read More

What is your Competitive Strategy?

You have your business plan. You may even have five- and ten-year plans for what you want to accomplish and financial goals to achieve. You’ve probably agonized for hours over the precise wording to put in your mission statement… but what’s your competitive strategy?

Michael E. Porter, renowned Harvard Business School professor and author, describes competitive strategy as “relating a company to its environment. Although the relevant environment is very broad, encompassing social as well as economic forces, the key aspect of the firm’s environment is the industry or industries in which it competes. “ Michael Porter further goes on to define earning the highest ROI in your industry as the ultimate goal for your strategy.

Fortune 500 companies consistently compare themselves to their competitors and markets. They also are clear and precise on exactly what they do and how they do it. But, benchmarking is not simply for big corporations; companies of all sizes need to have a clear idea of their strategic priorities in order to gain a competitive edge and succeed. Knowing which competitive strategy to choose and how to maximize its potential is just one of the many ways you can get noticed and be profitable in a crowded and competitive marketplace.

Strategic priorities can easily be broken down into three categories. And your company fits into one of the following categories 1) even if you don’t know it yet and 2) even though you are not a huge company like the examples we use below.

Operational Excellence: These companies strive to excel at cost leadership. They implement every tactic to improve efficiency and performance, to cut out excess spending, eradicate errors, and get products and services to their clients in the quickest, most efficient way possible. Customers learn to expect a standardized product or experience that is the same each time. Think Fed Ex, Walmart, or McDonalds.

Customer Intimacy: These companies strive to excel at offering personalization to the customer, yet still uphold a cost value to its customer. Their customers can pick and choose services to create a solution that is a good fit for their needs while still staying on budget. The company must obtain insights to their customer’s needs and the solution is not the cheapest option on the market, and also not necessarily the most innovative. These companies adapt and change with customer needs and the temperature of the marketplace. Think Amazon, Nordstrom and Mercedes.

Product Leadership: These companies constantly innovate the marketplace with products and services meant to mesmerize their customers. They create the products that customers “must have now” and the customer experience that keeps them coming back for more. Creativity and teamwork are hallmarks of their success. Think Apple, BMW and Fidelity Investments.

Where do you stand?
All businesses, regardless of size, need to choose a focused competitive strategy. Just like creating your mission statement offers guidelines for who you are as a business, understanding your competitive strategy in the marketplace offers direction and focus which leads to greater sales and success.
A good business strategy is only as good as the data used to inform those assumptions. Contact Acumen Partners today to learn more about the ways we help companies just like yours to gain clarity about your business strategy and close the performance gaps that cost you revenue.

What about Taking it to the Next Level: Hiring for Purpose and Fit

Hooray! You work for fun company with a great idea and a visionary founder at the helm. And now the conundrum: Why is your company unlikely to thrive?

The vast majority of seed-stage companies which fit this description are run by a few people who share a common vision and strategy. However they often lack a second, third, or even fourth in command to implement the vision of the founder. While these entrepreneurs share each other’s passions and can work well together, they rarely include a different point-of-view or complementary action style.

Does this sound familiar? How can you improve the odds for your success? One idea: Start by assessing whom, what, and where you are currently. Then consider what pieces (skill sets, experience, temperament) you are missing. Looking at people you already know who could fill this gap is generally a better strategy for losing friends rather than growing one’s business strategically. And professional recruiters are great for sourcing and screening talent – but often require a substantial upfront payment for their services. And what if you need more than sourcing, screening, and negotiating? Do you know how to write the job description? Can you specifically describe the talents and personal acumen you want in your new team members? Are you prepared to onboard for success? There is another way. How about an objective assessment of you and your current leadership team combined with consultation on the kind of team members you need to best meet your growth goals?

An Acumen Partners Baseline assessment includes an in-depth analysis of your company, your competitive market position, and the natural skills of your existing team. Understanding these elements can vastly improve your chances for success and the data-driven report is something you can share with investors with confidence.

Acumen clients also have access to the services of an experienced recruiting team who works for you to write that specific job description and ideal-candidate profile as well as to source viable candidates. Our onboarding specialists can help you hire and retain top talent through a training program to ensure the best possible experience for your new employees and your firm. And Acumen shares the risk We spread our very-competitive fees over the first year of employment and we guarantee the placement for 1 year on a prorated basis. If the new hire doesn’t work out, you stop paying us. It’s that simple.

Improve your odds for success and allow your visionaries to do what they do best. Call today to schedule an OnTarget Baseline with Acumen Partners.

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Success or Failure…May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

Business pundits often use stark numbers to capture attention. They throw out statistics like:

“80% of businesses fail in their first year!” or

“95% of businesses fail within the first 5 years!”

The truth is that new businesses are more likely to be alive after 5 years than to be dead. Better yet, for each year past their 5th birthday, the likelihood of survival actually improves! That’s the good news.

The real danger faced by entrepreneurs isn’t outright “failure” per se. It is actually the “failure to thrive”. After adjusting for companies with no employees and averaging across industries, the picture of operating companies posting consistent profits (i.e. “thriving”) looks very much like the standard bell curve. If we define “thriving” as EBITDA of 10% or better each year, that means that 85% of businesses are not thriving. It implies that 30% of businesses struggle to post profits or break even each year. The rest are actually losing money on an annual basis. Ouch.

The top reasons for failure to thrive hold true across companies of all sizes. They include:

Inadequate cash flow/poor cash management

Insufficient leadership & management

Lack of clear focus or purpose across the organization

Inaccurate market perceptions

Poor or faulty reporting/transparency

Emotions/politics trump over sound reasoning

All of these hurdles have at least one thing in common. They are all solvable. If all of these stumbling blocks can be removed, why do they continue to plague companies year after year? What do the 15% of companies that thrive know that their market companions do not? What practices can non-thriving companies adopt to change their trajectory?

Use Data to Get Your Bearings: Thriving companies employ strategies that prioritize data in the decision making process. The best data strategies collect information from both internal and external sources. The investment they make in data best practices is rewarded by ongoing profitable operations.

Prioritize Efforts to Make Changes: No company can address every element that needs attention simultaneously. Thriving companies have disciplined approaches to identifying challenges, understanding the impact, and focusing resources to resolve the challenges with the highest ROI.

Employ a Process of Ongoing Improvement: Thriving companies have adopted some form of ongoing continual improvement. Larger companies benefit from structured approaches like Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, or Lean. Smaller companies are able to get great results from less formal improvements models such as PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act). The key isn’t in which process gives the best results. It is formally adopting and executing some process of continual improvement that prioritizes objective data driven insights.

Bottom line is that most companies are capable of thriving. Their failure to do so isn’t tied to the market they are in. It is the result of an inadequate understanding of the metrics of both their own company and their competitive landscape. By introducing objective data into their decision-making and planning processes, they could quickly change the trajectory of their business and join the 15% of businesses that flourish.

Mirror, Window, or GPS: Which Gets Results in Today’s K12 Market?

Making Sense of ESSA: What You Need to Know

http://home.edweb.net/webinar/making-sense-essa-need-know/

Making Critical Decisions

CEO’s, CFO’s and especially CMO’s often rely on intuition when making critical decisions. But the fact is, executives dramatically increase their chances of success when they bring real-time data into the decision-making process.

Experience and instincts help executives make quick decisions. BUT fast decisions aren’t necessarily good decisions. At Acumen, we derive facts from industry data analysis. This information allows you to make more informed leadership choices.

Although intuitive decision-making is simple and quick, a lack of underlying data makes it hard to diagnose and correct problems when something goes wrong. Using Acumen’s data tools, we can drill down to find the root cause of problems and help you use factual analysis to set a new course.

Take, for example, the consumer move to shopping online. Big data has dramatically increased the market’s understanding of customers. Online retailers can track not only what customers buy, but also what else they viewed; how they navigated through the site; how much they were influenced by promotions, reviews, and page layouts; and similarities across individuals and groups. This data helped retailers like Amazon improve offerings and gain market share by advancing from strength to strength.

Today’s consumers expect digital companies to gather insights and develop offerings that business executives could only dream of a generation ago.

In fact, data can improve all our business decisions. Correctly understood, data allows us to competently drive or radically transform existing businesses when they are off track. Obtaining the right data and accurately analyzing it is key to every step of success, for every business regardless of industry.

Modern tools allow us to capture, measure, and compare data more effectively than ever before. As a result, today’s companies compete by managing processes with greater precision than has ever been possible. Accurate data allows us make better predictions and smarter decisions. We can target more-effective interventions. We can manage aspects of our companies that have previously been dominated by intuition with data-driven discipline and rigor.

Studies show that cumulative improvement is hard to obtain when executives react to problems instead of using facts to make prudent business decisions. And since most of your competitors are using data, companies that base decisions on gut feel or instinct are increasingly at a competitive disadvantage.

Data-driven decision-making is particularly effective at an operational or tactical level where risks must be managed. When aided by technology, data makes it easy to automate rudimentary tasks and decisions.

In fact, intuition-based and fact-based decision-making aren’t competing concepts. They actually complement each other. Acumen collects data across all business functions to project outcomes and validate the return on proposed programs or new products. We also use this data to guide leadership teams and build consensus using facts instead of politics and personal preferences.

How ESSA Changes the K-12 Selling Equation

The American education landscape is experiencing one of the biggest changes in the last 180 years.
As experienced business professionals, it’s easy for us to say “back in my day…” But, in this case, back in my day is actually not that far back. In fact, in a few years, even the relatively less experienced sales people will find themselves reminiscing the good old times. Until recently, the education market was full of tried-and-tested practices, traditional terminology, and predictable patterns. Not anymore. ESSA has changed everything. Read More

How can we prepare frontline players for new ESSA environment?

Are you operating a business in the education sector? If you are, everything is going to change soon. Read More

Fresh from the Feds: ESSA Accountability Rules & Regs

An update on the Accountability Rules and Regulations — What we know, what we think we know, and what remains unclear

The ESSA rollout time line and how it overlaps and interferes with the typical education buying cycle

How Evidence of Effectiveness is changing things for vendors

ESSA’s impact on selling in Q4 2016 and the first half of 2017 — Where are the wins and what are the pitfalls?

Watch as K-12 market experts Dr. Julie Carter with GreyEd Solutions and Steven Rowley with Acumen Partners share the latest information about ESSA and how it will impact your business in the coming year.

http://agile-ed.com/fresh-from-the-feds-essa-accountability

ESSA: HOW DOES A 1000 FOOT WAVE GO UNNOTICED

A tsunami strikes without warning. Only as it nears shore does the wave’s full destructive potential become visible. By the time you can see it coming, it’s too late to run for shelter. The devastation that follows is wide-spread and unforgiving.

ESSA State Plan Approval

ESSA Sales & Marketing Planning Tool_V0.8

ESSA Evidence Worksheet

ESSA and The Survival Of The Fittest

First, there was the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Now, its the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This new federal act on education has had an enormous impact on the education sector, including the associated businesses and organizations. It is a monumental shift, a big bang, a significant moment in history. Read More

ESSA 2018 Appropriations Process [INFOGRAPHIC]

Thank you for your interest in our ESSA Appropriations Process Infographic. Please click on the ‘Download’ link below and to the right to receive this PDF.

Don’t Let “Shiny” Problems Blind you to the Real Problems

“Got a headache? Take an Aspirin. It won’t cure your tumor, but it might help with the pain.” If a doctor were to suggest you treat a complex condition like a tumor with aspirin, you would quickly find a more competent physician (and possibly sue for malpractice). Why is it that so many professionals treat business symptoms with the same logic?

Falling sales = Increase Quarterly Field Incentives

Thin margins = Deploy cost cutting initiatives

Unhappy Customers = Expand focus on new customer acquisition

Short-term actions to treat business “symptoms” are sometimes necessary. But, unless they address the underlying cause, such actions only conceal the fundamental problem. To keep pain points from returning, you have to heal them at their source.

Businesses are complex systems not unlike the human body. They provide signals when something isn’t right. Employees grumble, sales fall, and reports show up late. Typical managers interpret these signs as employee problems and take action to address undesirable behaviors. Effective leaders see these signals as indicators and use them to correct the underlying source.

View Your Business As An Interactive System

Effective leaders are distinguished from common managers by their ability to see organizations as interactive systems. Businesses are comprised of people, equipment, and processes. Each component has its own strengths and weaknesses and interacts with other components in predictable ways. Positioning components and guiding interactions is how business leaders create competitive advantages.

Failing to see your business as an interactive system makes it very difficult to connect symptoms with underlying causes. Business plans are common tools used by professionals to design and communicate intentions. Unfortunately, plan writers often fail to account for the interactions of the business functions and instead create a description doomed to failure before it is begun.

Map Your Business

Just as a physician cannot diagnose ailments without a deep understanding of the patient, business leaders must work to understand the complexities of the organizations they serve.

Begin by identifying the core functions of your company and articulating how each function communicates with and impacts all other functions. Identify the following:

Incoming Good and Services: How do you obtain the raw materials or critical employee skill sets to create your unique offerings? How do you identify the quality of these incoming resources? What happens if inferior quality slips by early scrutiny?

Production/Operations: How do you combine these materials and skills to create unique offerings? How can you tell that these production efforts achieved the desired results? What happens later if inferior quality slips past this stage?

Outbound Logistics: How do you get your goods and services into the hands of your customers? How can you tell that your products were delivered as intended? What happens later if outbound problems occur undetected?

Sales & Marketing: How do you communicate with your market and facilitate transactions? How can you distinguish between slow sales caused by your sales/marketing team and those related to earlier functions?

Service: How do you maintain your relationships with customers? How do you connect their experience with your company to each of your critical functions?

Know Where to Look

An accurate mapping of your business provides an excellent blueprint for connecting visible symptoms of trouble with underlying causes. Sales falling? Before firing the VP of Sales, first double-check the factors that could contribute to problems with potential consumers. Costs running high? Before cutting staff, confirm that inputs and processes are optimized for success. One of those inputs could very well be your loyal staff.

More importantly, an accurate map allows business leaders to be proactive in preventing problems and quickly responding to external market factors. Input problems are addressed long before they can impact the end customer. Production inefficiencies are streamlined before costs can rise enough to become prohibitive.

Early Action Prevents Later Reaction

Mapping out the complex relationships within your business is probably not high on your things to do list. Most business leaders are too busy responding to the latest crisis to spend time on prevention. They are too busy putting out fires to remove the fuel source from the inferno. They will get to that during the next annual planning session…if that ever comes.

The only way to free yourself from putting bandages on symptoms is to begin taking preventative measures immediately. Step back. Create a quick map of your company. And be honest — If you have tried to address an ongoing problem more than once, it is most likely a symptom and not the root cause you’ve been trying to address.

Current ESSA State Plans

How each state is handling ESSA is a challenging, ever-changing world that can be incredibly time-consuming to manage. To help find the pertinent information on ESSA, Acumen has compiled a list of key resources. Below is a list of each state’s ESSA website, and their current ESSA plan document.

Are you ready for the ESSA avalanche?

If your company sells into the education market, Every Student Succeeds Act is the most sweeping change to hit the US education scene in history. We are embarking on the most turbulent upheavals in education funding we have ever seen.

Make no mistake, ESSA is now the law of the land. Schools, and the companies that sell to them, are already governed by the new regulations. Highlights of the changes include:

The dollars that schools have been using to purchase are in large measure still there – but they are in new places, with new caveats behind them.

The scientific research to prove effectiveness is different.

States are free to choose their own paths, which will lead to greater variability all the way around.

And that’s just a few of the immediate changes. The time to act is NOW. Priorities include:

Marketing materials: Look carefully at jargon. If your company references “AYP” or “highly qualified,” they are no longer meaningful terms.

Opportunity: This year’s spend-down is likely to be huge as schools need to use the monies allotted under the old system

Sales Training: After this year’s spend-down, your reps will need to be retrained; the relationships they have leveraged for success in the past are in jeopardy.

Districts are in a learning mode too; they don’t understand how ESSA works and will likely be much more cautious going forward

Funding: Competitive grants are discontinued by October 2016.

The key is to be smart, focused, and ready-to-go! Make sure the value you bring to schools and districts is still relevant. If not, take steps to make the changes you need to make TODAY. There is no question that education vendor operations will be impacted – it’s up to you to make sure that impact is positive.

Recruiting in the World of Start-ups

Recruiting in the World of Start-ups

Who would benefit most from the services of a recruiter? It is actually the Start-Up! One essential hire – whether in sales, operations or general management could cut in half the time required to move from start-up to growth.Read More

Proven Leaders are Also Great Readers

Great leaders read. It’s a short sentence but it is layered with meaning. What is it about reading that makes it such a universal passion among people who are best suited to lead people and organizations? Is it that leaders read books that contain all the answers? Not likely. The realities of today’s rapidly changing market place have no historical precedent. 21st century business leaders must handle challenges that have never been seen before.

How ESSA Will Affect My Organization 2017-2018

http://home.edweb.net/webinar/essa-effect-organization-2017/

ESSA Update: The Battle for Fall Funding

The first “back-to-school” season under ESSA legislation is shaping up to be one of the most chaotic and challenging seasons on record for both schools and vendors. For vendors, success in navigating the 2017/18 school year will depend on their ability to follow two simple rules:

ESSA Update: Staying Relevant and Competitive in a Changing Market

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Earlier this year, Acumen Partners partnered with Agile Marketing to share insights about the new ESSA legislation and its expected impact on the US K-12 Education market. As Spring 2016 is winding down, it’s time to turn our attention to the challenges we’re faced with for back-to-school 2016 and beyond. This ESSA webinar originally broadcast on May 18, 2016 picks up where the last left off, with a special focus on the impact the changing funding environment will have on your business. We address the questions that have been plaguing EDU vendors since the passage of ESSA.

What do we know and what don’t we know about ESSA? What are facts and what are myths?

How does the funding scenario differ for 2016-17 vs 2017-18?

How will the massive reallocations from Federal to State DOEs affect funding for your customers?

What impact is ESSA likely to have on your business over the next 18 months

Join K-12 market experts Jenny House with RedRock Reports and Steven Rowley with Acumen Partners to track the progress of ESSA and the questions you should be asking yourself to make sure you remain both relevant and viable in a post-NCLB world.

ESSA UPDATE: Impact of Executive Orders On ESSA Roll-Out

As the new administration settled into their seats in Washington DC, President Trump and Sec. DeVos made many announcements regarding shifting priorities for the Federal Department of Education. Headlines have included significant changes to school choice, accountability, funding eligibility, the status of the Common Core, etc.

Whether you are a vendor or an educator, whether you favor the Trump/DeVos pronouncements or not, the real question you should be asking is: Can they do that? Can the White House and the DOE actually make all the changes they are announcing?

ESSA UPDATE: Are ESSA’s New Evidence Requirements a Hard Stop for You?

It’s a big issue! ESSA establishes a very high threshold defining what schools can now assert as “evidence” to support product purchases. Anecdotal success stories are out. Soft research beefed up with marketing jargon won’t pass muster. Strong alignment with rigorously performed theoretical work is now the minimum starting point and no longer the key to school funding.

So…how big of a problem is “Evidence” to you as ESSA takes full effect this fall?

Short of clear ESSA Rules & Regulations being available to soften the blow, the definition of “Evidence” as outlined in the Every Student Succeeds Act is the minimum standard that legislators, educators, and commercial partners must meet.

Here are a few obsolete “NCLB” data strategies that every vendor must rethink: Read More

ESSA and Traditional Business Strategies

The Every Students Succeeds Act changed everything.

But this change is not the cause of concern. The truly worrying aspect of the ESSA transformation is the approach of businesses towards the change. Many successful education marketers today formed while No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was the norm. This is particularly true for education technology organizations. They created and refined their business strategies to suit the NCLB regulations. They relied on traditional sales processes to maximize profitability.

Does ESSA Replace, Refine, or Reinforce CCSS?

The Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) is transforming every aspect of the education market.

One of the areas where the ground is still shaking beneath marketers’ feet is educational standards. There is a lot of confusion about how ESSA impacts educational standards. Many are particularly unsure about the future of the Common Core Standards Initiative. Will it stay? Will it go? What will be the future of educational standards under ESSA? The education market landscape is abuzz with similar questions. Where are the answers? Read More

Becoming a Data-Driven Organization

Becoming a Data-Driven Organization

Human beings collect data points from the day they are born. As they grow and experience more things, they put those data points into a context. Every human considers those data points and the corresponding context to guide their next steps. This is of tremendous value when you’re considering decisions like banging your head against the wall. (Example: “Do I have enough data points to know that I will get a headache? I do! Let’s NOT do that,” thinks my learned 5-year old. “HUH?” says my curious 4-year old, followed by a very surprised, “Ow!” He needs more data points.) Read More

Aligning Your Revenue Goals with Sales Objectives

We, at Acumen Partners, have had the opportunity to work with many talented people across all walks of life and industry. Our team has been associated with many great organizations. Recently, we have had conversations with senior leaders from across various business landscapes and have discussed the challenges executives and their sales teams face in achieving their primary revenue goals. This challenge, as we all know, is nothing new! Revenue Challenges come at different times within an organization and often wear different cloaks.

Acumen and Unravelling ESSA – a Timeline

Acumen and Unravelling ESSA – a Timeline

Acumen Partners, as part of our due diligence for ourself and our client companies, keeps up-to-date on political and economic trends that effect education and the companies that provide programs for educators. Our staff has the ability and the capacity to analyze changes and provide warnings when new programs or regulations are on the horizon. Acumen Partners followed the unheralded adoption of ESSA as it quickly made its way through the legislative system and finally reached President Obama’s desk in December of 2015.